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ea49db0
|
I went to the door and looked out. The cool night breeze was blowing peacefully down the hall. No excited neighbors hung out of doorways. A small gun had gone off and broken a pane of glass, but noises like that don't mean much any more.
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crime
guns
los-angeles
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Raymond Chandler |
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28c0222
|
Eddie Mars would have been very unlikely to involve himself in a double murder just because another man had gone to town with the blonde he was not even living with. It might have annoyed him, but business is business, and you have to hold your teeth clamped around Hollywood to keep from chewing on stray blondes.
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Raymond Chandler |
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56ad6cd
|
Mr. Cobb was my escort," she said. "Such a nice escort, Mr. Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten -- when Larry Cobb was sober."
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drunkenness
sober
sobriety
|
Raymond Chandler |
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b43ed63
|
If I had a razor, I'd cut your throat -- just to see what ran out of it.
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cold-blood
cold-blooded
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Raymond Chandler |
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6d3a6aa
|
It was raining again the next morning, a slanting gray rain like a swung curtain of crystal beads. I got up feeling sluggish and tired and stood looking out of the windows, with a dark, harsh taste of Sternwoods still in my mouth. I was as empty of life as a scarecrow's pockets. I went out to the kitchenette and drank two cups of black coffee. You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women.
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|
hung-over
rain
women
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Raymond Chandler |
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e42fc03
|
He leaned his back against the workbench and looked me over without haste, without interest, as if he was looking at a slab of cold meat. Perhaps he thought of people that way.
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|
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Raymond Chandler |
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b6adbe5
|
Once outside the law you're all the way outside. You think he's just a gambler. I think he's a pornographer, a blackmailer, a hot car broker, a killer by remote control, and a suborner of crooked cops. He's whatever looks good to him, whatever has the cabbage pinned to it. Don't try to sell me on any high-souled racketeers. They don't come in that pattern.
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|
law
|
Raymond Chandler |
|
ee94fa3
|
I'm not Sherlock Holmes or Philo Vance. I don't expect to go over ground the police have covered and pick up a broken pen point and build a case from it. If you think there is anybody in the detective business making a living doing that sort of thing, you don't know much about cops.
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detectives
thoroughness
|
Raymond Chandler |
|
df086ec
|
I'm a very smart guy. I haven't a feeling or a scruple in the world. All I have the itch for is money. I am so money greedy that for twenty-five bucks a day and expenses, mostly gasoline and whiskey, I do my thinking myself, what there is of it; I risk my whole future, the hatred of the cops and of Eddie Mars and his pals. I dodge bullets and eat saps, and say thank you very much, if you have any more trouble, I hope you'll think of me, I'l..
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|
determination
grit
persistence
private-detective
|
Raymond Chandler |
|
308590e
|
You lied to him and you drank your cyanide like a little gentleman. You died like a poisoned rat, Harry, but you're no rat to me.
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|
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Raymond Chandler |
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4622e1c
|
She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.
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|
|
Raymond Chandler |
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59e56e4
|
The law enforcement in this town is terrific. All through prohibition Eddie Mars' place was a night club and they had two uniformed men in the lobby every night--to see that the guests didn't bring their own liquor instead of buying it from the house.
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|
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Raymond Chandler |
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ff57260
|
Los jovenes que quieren que uno les ensene a escribir no hacen lo que hago yo [tachar, corregir, reescribir]. Esperan que todo lo que escriben sea publicado tal cual. No estan dispuestos a sacrificar nada para aprender el oficio. No les entra en la cabeza que lo que uno quiere hacer y lo que puede hacer son cosas completamente distintas.
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|
|
Raymond Chandler |
|
9e83f88
|
sight and snapped a switch on his call box. 'Have
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|
|
Raymond Chandler |
|
7e0cb20
|
He looked up rather sadly. "So would I. So would we all. But show business has always been like that--any kind of show business. If these people didn't live intense and rather disordered lives, if their emotions didn't ride them too hard--well, they wouldn't be able to catch those emotions in flight and imprint them on a few feet of celluloid or project them across the footlights."
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|
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Raymond Chandler |
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46b3970
|
Being a copper I like to see the law win. I'd like to see the flashy well-dressed mugs like Eddie Mars spoiling their manicures in the rock quarry at Folsom, alongside of the poor little slum-bred hard guys that got knocked over on their first caper and never had a break since. That's what I'd like. You and me both lived too long to think I'm likely to see it happen. Not in this town, not in any town half this size, in any part of this wide..
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Raymond Chandler |
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a9f203f
|
I stopped thinking. Lights moved behind my closed lids. I was lost in space. I was a gilt-edged sap come back from a vain adventure. I was a hundred dollar package of dynamite that went off with a noise like a pawnbroker looking at a dollar watch. I was a pink-headed bug crawling up the side of the City Hall. I was asleep.
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Raymond Chandler |
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b9810d4
|
But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor--by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his wor..
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|
|
Raymond Chandler |
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4edc222
|
There are one hundred and ninety ways of being a bastard and Carne knew all of them.
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|
Raymond Chandler |
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0c382c3
|
There was a woman. She was rich. She thought she wanted to marry me. It wouldn't have worked. I'll probably never see her again. But I remember." "Let's go," she said quietly. "And let's leave the memory in charge. I only wish I had one worth remembering." On the way down to the Cadillac I didn't touch her either. She drove beautifully. When a woman is a really good driver she is just about perfect."
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Raymond Chandler |
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4c946d2
|
They don't have gangsters in Bay City. They're all working in pictures.
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|
Raymond Chandler |
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569f5d1
|
You can make a lot of mistakes in just one lifetime. (I'll Be Waiting)
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|
Raymond Chandler |
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ad4faf1
|
I need not add that a man who indulges in parenthood for the first time at the age of fifty-four deserves all he gets.
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Raymond Chandler |
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ba7bba2
|
She went out slowly. The way she did it hadn't been learned at business college.
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|
Raymond Chandler |
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6590c02
|
From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away. Her mouth was too wide, her eyes
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|
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Raymond Chandler |
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e15e09a
|
It got darker. I thought; and thought in my mind moved with a kind of sluggish stealthiness, as if it was being watched by bitter and sadistic eyes. I thought of dead eyes looking at a moonless sky, with black blood at the corners of the mouths beneath them. I thought of nasty old women beaten to death against the posts of their dirty beds. I thought of a man with bright blond hair who was afraid and didn't quite know what he was afraid of,..
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Raymond Chandler |
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afd284e
|
No estoy dispuesto a hablar, Eddie. ?Por que iba a hacerlo? Dejo la pistola sobre el escritorio y la golpeo con la mano abierta. - Esto -dijo-. Y yo podria hacer que le resultara provechoso. - Ya, eso suena mejor. No meta la pistola en este asunto. Yo siempre estoy dispuesto a escuchar el sonido del dinero.
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detective
dinero
pistola
|
Raymond Chandler |
|
d33d9a2
|
Dont get fancy, buster. I might loosen your jaw for you." "Ha, ha," I said. "You might play centre field for the Yankees and hit a home run with a breadstick."
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|
Raymond Chandler |
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8abea15
|
Parecia mas muerto que muchos cadaveres
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|
muerte
|
Raymond Chandler |
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7a4a64b
|
She didn't look hard, but she looked as if she had heard all the answers and remembered the ones she thought she might be able to use sometime.
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|
Raymond Chandler |
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852df79
|
On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
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Raymond Chandler |
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3cbeac2
|
Breeze looked at me very steadily. Then he sighed. Then he picked the glass up and tasted it and sighed again shook his head sideways with a half smile; the way a man does when you give him a drink and he needs it very badly and it is just right and the first swallow is like a peek into a cleaner, sunnier, brighter world.
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|
booze
raymond-chandler
|
Raymond Chandler |
|
477c4bc
|
There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that. The growth of populations has in no way increased the amount; it has merely increased the adeptness with which substitutes can be produced and packaged.
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|
|
Raymond Chandler |
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ac12532
|
And there are still a number of people around who say that Hammett didn't write detective stories at all-merely hard-boiled chronicles of mean streets with a perfunctory mystery element dropped in like the olive in a martini. (The Simple Art of Murder)
|
|
detective-stories
hard-boiled
|
Raymond Chandler |
|
96f69df
|
To the memory of Mr. Stan Phillips. (...) Just another four-flusher.
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|
Raymond Chandler |
|
92a2f9a
|
Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn't like it is either crazy or sober.
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|
Raymond Chandler |
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2f5a428
|
The girl slept on, motionless, in that curled-up looseness achieved by some women and all cats.
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|
Raymond Chandler |
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a51c4a4
|
A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy."
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|
Raymond Chandler |
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ec48632
|
The old man nodded, as if his neck was afraid of the weight of his head.
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|
Raymond Chandler |
|
18f3747
|
You know what Canino will do---beat my teeth out and then kick me in the stomach for mumbling."
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|
Raymond Chandler |
|
097da76
|
A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.
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|
|
Raymond Chandler |
|
deceaff
|
We sneered at each other across the desk for a moment. He sneered better than I did.
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|
Raymond Chandler |
|
503711b
|
They say money don't stink," he said. "I sometimes wonder."
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|
Raymond Chandler |
|
aef5235
|
He didn't curl his lip because it had been curled when he came in.
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|
Raymond Chandler |